


What You Can't Have

by Catchclaw



Series: Mental Mimosa [287]
Category: Captain America (Movies)
Genre: A Not-Quite Reunion, Angst, M/M, Pining, Post-Black Panther (2018), The Possibility of Healing, Wakanda (Marvel)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-31
Updated: 2019-07-31
Packaged: 2020-07-28 06:30:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 810
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20059561
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Catchclaw/pseuds/Catchclaw
Summary: He isn’t ready to see you.T’Challa looks chagrined when he says it at least, so. There’s that.





	What You Can't Have

**Author's Note:**

> Prompt: Dear god. [This.](https://catchclaw.tumblr.com/post/186674831477/forchrisevans-chris-evans-in-the-red-sea-diving)

_ He isn’t ready to see you_.

T’Challa looks chagrined when he says it at least, so. There’s that.

_ Well, _ you say with a sigh, the echo of two dozen others, _ ok, Your Highness. Thanks_.

It comes out a little more abrupt than it should. It’s not T’Challa’s fault, it’s what Bucky wants, and you’re willing to wait, aren’t you, until he asks for you. You’ve waited for him for nearly a century, anyway; what’s another month or three?

Except it isn’t that simple and T’Challa’s a king and no matter how upset you are, you owe the man due respect.

_ I’m sorry_, you say, meeting your friend’s holographic gaze. _ I didn’t mean to be rude_.

_ You’re frustrated_, T’Challa says, simply. _ With the situation, not with me. That is apparent. Don’t worry, Captain--I don’t take it personally. _

_ Still, it wasn’t--I shouldn’t take it out on you. _

_ Better on me than on yourself. _

You manage a half smile. _ Maybe. _

You sign off before he can say something sympathetic and throw the covers back, sit up and run your hands through your hair. It’s longer than it’s ever been, so long it’s curling at the ends; once, it would’ve been driving you crazy. But between it and your beard, when you look in the mirror, you see a different man, a stranger, a man between lives and you understand why the Wakandans call you _ umhambi olahlekileyo_, lost traveller: nomad. This isn’t a face that Bucky has touched; hell, it’s one he’s never even seen. It’s easier to deal with his rejection, then, his distance, day after day, it’s some other man who’s borrowed your body and answers to the same name.

You glance at the holo on the nightstand again, catch the soft stream of new messages. One from Tasha, one from Vision; still radio silence from Sam. That stings. Not like you’d answer him, anyway--you haven’t returned a single missive for almost a month--but if he’s not even trying, that means he’s still angry; he has every right to be. You did leave he and Nat high and dry. Nat knows you, though, and understands the pull of isolation; Sam doesn’t. He thinks you abandoned him.

Which, of course, you did.

But the moment you’d gotten that message from Shuri, _ He’s awake_, what the hell else were you supposed to do? Evil could wait. Bucky couldn’t.

That’s what you’d thought, anyway.

That he’d said no to seeing you that first day, you could live with, the second, a little less, and by the end of that week it had stung, getting the same call every goddamn morning: _ he’s isn’t ready to see you. _Not yet.

You stand up, the sun drenching your skin, the windows open, the air deliciously warm. The blinds are thrown and you aren’t wearing any clothes but hell, you’re so high up. If you padded over to the wall, you could see out over the city and beyond to the grasslands, the fields; see the animals running and leaping, the lakes, a hint of far-away rivers. And somewhere in your vista sits the love of your life, free of HYDRA in body and mind, and healing; _ slowly_, Shuri tells you on those days when you can bring yourself ask. _ To be whole again, Captain Rogers, takes time_. 

You know this. God, do you. You thought you were yourself again, as much as the future would let you, until Bucky returned, and now it’s painful, how not yourself you are, you’ve been, you will be, until you’re with him again.

You never should have left him here. Part of you believes this. Part of you, even then, after everything--Tony, Siberia, Zemo--was willing to wait. But you’d let duty call, always, again, told yourself you were more use out in the world than in stasis here with him, and now he doesn’t want to see you, won’t even take a holo to talk, and honestly, part of you can’t blame him: he’d woken up on the other side of a lifetime of horrors and you weren’t there to grab on to, to help pull him out of that last, cold darkness and into a new, unblemished light.

You would have kissed him, had you been there, warmed his cool lips with yours; held him hard during that first, beautiful night. You’d like to think that he would have turned to you and breathed your same and reached for your body under the sheets; that he’d have curled himself against you, into you; that you’d have helped him understand that he was awake now, alive.

You could have, you might have, but all that possibility was lost the moment that you left here.

You’re hard now, thinking of him, but then you’ve always been good at that, haven’t you? Wanting exactly what you can't have.


End file.
